A few days ago, the CTO of Soylent, the food drink, was describing their elaborate computer infrastructure. They have one (1) product and a simple web site. Based on their sales volume, they do about two sales a minute. That could run on a HostGator "Hatchling" account for $4/month, using one of the seven off the shelf shopping cart/payment programs HostGator offers.
// feature request: poster flag's own posts as tangents that start new topics leaving only a graphic (arrow leaving square) in original thread
https://medium.com/@alando46/how-we-spent-500-on-tech-to-shi...
If you knew how most modern warehouse/shipping facilities ran their IT, your head would spin.
The coolest software project I've ever been on was also the dumbest. We were trying to build a bios in-house - something that can be bought off-the-shelf for a buck. In theory, it could have saved us millions in the long run. In the short run, we were wasting man-months of engineering on something that was not our business, when the clock was ticking loudly. Fun as heck, but if I caught my own employees doing such a thing today, I'd at least threaten to fire them if they even thought about it again.
Likewise, Soylent is not in the inventory management business. Why should they be writing inventory management software? Buy that stuff. Focus development money on the core business.
Cost advantage? What's that? We just want a cool project!
Blame the employees for crappy management. Sounds like fun!
These kinds of managers are utterly toxic. At the slightest hint of this kind of behavior, I'd be reaching out to my contacts to find new employment, where I would certainly be paid better, but hopefully don't have a feudal work environment.